Social networking startup Bluesky is rolling out one in every of customers’ most in-demand options — no, not an edit button! — bookmarks.
The corporate on Monday introduced the brand new addition, which it calls Saved Posts. The function is accessible by means of a brand new bookmark icon beneath every submit, subsequent to the center for favoriting.
Your saved posts can then be seen at any time from the brand new “Saved” part within the app’s major navigation.
Whereas it could appear redundant to have each likes and bookmarks on a social app since each supply a approach to mark a submit to be referenced later, bookmarks supply a personal various to the “like.” On Bluesky, your account and its related information are public, which suggests your likes are additionally public. That doesn’t work for everybody, as some belongings you save are private, or just aren’t the kinds of belongings you wish to publicly promote.
Journalists, for instance, could save posts they intention to reference later, however don’t essentially wish to broadcast that they’ve simply began wanting into one thing, which may invite undesirable consideration. Others could merely wish to bookmark their favourite grownup content material.
On X, Elon Musk realized that the general public nature of likes may truly lower engagement, which prompted the corporate last year to hide users’ likes. In line with X workers on the time, public likes may incentivize the incorrect habits, as folks may really feel discouraged from liking content material that could be “edgy,” or to guard their public picture, they mentioned.
The AT Protocol, which powers Bluesky and different smaller social apps, doesn’t but assist non-public information, nevertheless, so there isn’t a approach to conceal customers’ likes. As an alternative, the corporate constructed a approach to save a user’s bookmarks off-protocol in the interim, which permits them to be non-public, much like Bluesky’s DMs (non-public messages). If and when the protocol evolves to assist non-public information, things could change.
Within the meantime, the addition of saved posts on Bluesky may encourage customers to have interaction extra with content material on the platform, whereas additionally providing a approach to look again at a curated assortment of solely posts you wish to reference later, relatively than all the things you casually favored as you scrolled your feeds. It’ll additionally supply a substitute for replying to posts with that pink pushpin emoji, as many Bluesky customers do now as a workaround for saving posts they wish to return to. (There’s even a nice little migration tool for individuals who used this methodology.)
The addition follows one other latest replace for the Bluesky app, which rolled out only days ago, providing a button that now gives each picture and video uploads, instruments to supply suggestions to customized feed creators, and a manner so as to add folks to a Starter Park (a pack of advisable folks to comply with, which anybody can create).